My mid-week morning train WFH reads:
• Don’t bet on the Davos consensus: Davos is a lot of things: elitist, cold, kinda cabal-y. But it’s also wrong, like, all the time. The “Davos consensus” as contra-indicator: it missed the 2008 crisis, Brexit, Trump, the rise of nationalism & balkanization, and of course the pandemic. (Semafor)
• Rental Housing Is Suddenly Headed Toward a Hard Landing: While investors were focused on fears of a collapse in the homebuying industry, a crash in the apartment market has been taking shape. (Bloomberg) but see also The uneasy US housing stalemate: Affordability is bad, but a bust is unlikely. (Financial Times)
• Crypto Is Just a ‘Hot Ball’ of Momentum-Chasing Money: This is what happens in the absence of fundamentals. (Bloomberg)
• Inside the High-Yield Spread: High yield is not pricing a recession. (Verdad)
• The Age of Free Money Is Over. But There Are Still Plenty of Opportunities: Bullish or bearish, our 10 panelists help make sense of increasingly complicated market dynamics. The optimist sees bubbles and thinks champagne. The pessimist thinks Alka-Seltzer. So it goes with investors, too, including the 10 on this year’s Barron’s Roundtable. Some consider last year’s steep losses in stocks and bonds a necessary cleansing that set the stage for renewed rallies and lofty returns. Others simply see it as the first leg down in a protracted bear market. (Barron’s)
• Shopper Rebellion Against Higher Prices Helps Slow Inflation: Companies are hitting the brakes on price increases after wary consumers limit their buying; ‘They want to save money and raising prices is not an option.’ (Wall Street Journal)
• This 22-year-old is trying to save us from ChatGPT before it changes writing forever: ChatGPT is an interactive chatbot powered by machine learning. The technology has basically devoured the entire Internet, reading the collective works of humanity and learning patterns in language that it can recreate. All you have to do is give it a prompt, and ChatGPT can do an endless array of things. The technology is both awesome — and terrifying. (NPR)
• Are we too worried about misinformation? “Resist trying to make things better”: A conversation with internet security expert Alex Stamos. (Vox)
• The latest Pentagon UFO report finds balloons, drones and trash — but no aliens: The military wants to reduce the stigma of reporting sightings in an age where spy drones are proliferating. (Grid)
• Pooch portraits: Dog Photography awards – in pictures: The winners of the 2022 Dog Photography awards, chosen from more than 1,400 entries from 50 different countries. (The Guardian)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Jennifer Grancio, CEO of Engine No. 1, where she guides the firm’s strategic vision. She previously was a founding member of BlackRock’s iShares business, where she led European, US, and global distribution, driving the growth of iShares and the global ETF industry.
3, 6 and 12-month annualized change in inflation show some significant downside momentum.
Source: Torsten Slok via Carl Quintanilla
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